First night at the in-laws

This is a true incident that happened to my sister Shruti and her then fiancé Prashant. Theirs was an arranged meeting and like most arranged relationships both of them wished they could spend more time with each other before the wedding. They were given some time with each other but it was always under adult supervision, every half hour or so someone would drop in with the pretext of asking something or if they went out to movies or restaurant someone always accompanied them.

One day Prashant learned that he had to spend 1-2 days in Shruti’s town for business, he was overjoyed, this gave him a perfect excuse of visiting Shruti without anyone from his side tagging along.

In Shruti’s house things were not that simple. In those days it was not customary for future son-in-law to spend nights at his in-laws but at the same time they could not say no either. After much thought it was decided that my kaka and mama (dad’s and mom’s brother) were invited to visit us and so to neighbors and others it appears that Prashant was visiting us to meet our uncles, who incidently were not present at the engagement.

On his way to meet Shruti, Prashant was day dreaming about giving Shruti a kiss and taking her in his arms and hiding from others and meeting on the terrace. After completing his work Prashant came to our house. Dinner was a big event and after dinner everyone sat talking and having a good time. Later the sleeping arrangements were explained to Prashant, my kaka & mama were sleeping in the guest room and Prashant was to sleep in my parents room and they would sleep in the living room. Of course our hero would not let this happen. He volunteered to sleep in the guest room with my mama/kaka. His reasons were two fold, he wanted to make a good impression and the most important reason was that the guest room was on the same level as Shruti’s bedroom and secretly he hoped to see her later that night.

Everyone tried to talk him out of this but he would not cave in, see our reasons were two fold too, one we wanted our jamai to be comfortable and the other was my mama and kaka were known to have a terrible snoring problem. It was so bad that my mami had been sleeping in the living room for the past few years and my kaki was not as understanding, she made my kaka sleep on the terrace. Her theory was that the snoring scared away thieves, animals and ghosts.

Before we went to bed, I teased Prashant and told him to be ready for a sleepless night, my cousins joined in and winked at him. That made him happy, of course his definition of a sleepless night was not what he was about the experience. Needless to say Prashant had a sleepless night, instead of spending it in his love’s embrace he spend it listening to the symphony of snores. In the morning he looked tired and mad, elders would not talk about it but the younger ones had a good laugh about this.

Prashant had planned to work slowly to stay here 3-4 days but instead he finished everything in a hurry and left the same day. He was left alone with Shruti for a moment and all he could say was “It looks like the snoring problems runs on both sides of your family, all I hope is that you have not inherited this. We still remember this incident and laugh.

 

Hi Sowparnika : Thanks, yeah his dreams were all shattered but was a good sport about it, I guess all guys act all nice before the wedding

 

Hi Usha : Thanks, yes his dream was shatterd and his sleep was interrupted, no wonder he left early.